ARTISANAL OFFERINGS
Sawmill District marketplace will focus on food, retail
Heritage Hotels and Resorts has announced it will partner with the owners of the Grove Cafe & Market in developing the Sawmill Market, envisioned as an artisan food market in a former lumber warehouse across from the company’s new Hotel Chaco.
The 25,000-square-foot market will include restaurants, craft cocktails, local food vendors, an artist gallery and retail shops, according to a news release from Heritage. Opening is planned for sometime in 2019.
Jason and Lauren Green, who opened The Grove in the EDO neighborhood in 2006, are partnering with Heritage Hotels & Resorts Inc. on the project. Jason Greene is a graduate of the New England Culinary Institute, and Lauren Greene earlier worked in hotels in Las Vegas, Nev., and Scottsdale, Ariz., according to The Grove’s website. The Grove’s menu also features products from local farmers and food artisans.
Serving as advisers on the new project, according to the news release, are celebrity chef Mark Miller, the force behind the Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe, and Steve Carlin, developer of the Oxbow Public Market in Napa, Calif., and project manager for the Ferry Building Marketplace in San Francisco.
The Sawmill Market is the next stage in the continuing redevelopment of the Sawmill District that Jim Long, founder and CEO of Heritage, has described as “new urbanism at its best.”
Long and his investor group have bought about a half-dozen warehouses near Hotel Albuquerque and the new luxury Hotel Chaco, both owned by Heritage. Sawmill Market will occupy the old Paxton Lumber building on Bellamah NW about a block east of Rio Grande Boulevard.
“You already have an incredible setting to create this remarkable place,” Long told the Journal in an interview last year. “What the disconnect has been is … in the heart of the historic center and an urban location, you have a warehouse environment, which is an inappropriate use of that land.”